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In physics, the dot product takes two vectors and returns a scalar quantity. It is also known as the "scalar product". The dot product of two vectors can be defined as the product of the magnitudes of the two vectors and the cosine of the angle between the two vectors.
The scalar projection is defined as [2] = ‖ ‖ = ^ where the operator ⋅ denotes a dot product, ‖a‖ is the length of a, and θ is the angle between a and b. The scalar projection is equal in absolute value to the length of the vector projection, with a minus sign if the direction of the projection is opposite to the direction of b ...
where the operator denotes a dot product, ^ is the unit vector in the direction of , ‖ ‖ is the length of , and is the angle between and . [ 1 ] The term scalar component refers sometimes to scalar projection, as, in Cartesian coordinates , the components of a vector are the scalar projections in the directions of the coordinate axes .
Note: This page uses common physics notation for spherical coordinates, in which is the angle between the z axis and the radius vector connecting the origin to the point in question, while is the angle between the projection of the radius vector onto the x-y plane and the x axis. Several other definitions are in use, and so care must be taken ...
The following are important identities in vector algebra.Identities that only involve the magnitude of a vector ‖ ‖ and the dot product (scalar product) of two vectors A·B, apply to vectors in any dimension, while identities that use the cross product (vector product) A×B only apply in three dimensions, since the cross product is only defined there.
For a quaternion q = a + bi + cj + dk, Hamilton used two projections: S q = a, for the scalar part of q, and V q = bi + cj + dk, the vector part. Using the modern terms cross product (×) and dot product (.), the quaternion product of two vectors p and q can be written pq = –p.q + p×q.
The dot product of two vectors can be defined as the product of the magnitudes of the two vectors and the cosine of the angle between the two vectors. Alternatively, it is defined as the product of the projection of the first vector onto the second vector and the magnitude of the second vector.
The dot product takes two vectors x and y, and produces a real number x ⋅ y. If x and y are represented in Cartesian coordinates, then the dot product is defined by () = + +. The dot product satisfies the properties [1] It is symmetric in x and y: x ⋅ y = y ⋅ x.